The Story of America, Told Through Mark Twain’s Favorite Foods 馬克．吐溫的美食 美國的故事

文/Tejal Rao

譯/李京倫

Mark Twain was a well-traveled literary superstar, so famous that his editor once journeyed to Washington to ask President Theodore Roosevelt if he would move Thanksgiving because it coincided with Twain’s birthday plans. (Twain moved his party.)

But in 1879, on a book tour through Europe, he craved the simplest foods from home, with agonizing specificity. Twain wanted Early Rose potatoes, a Vermont-bred heirloom, roasted in the ashes of a fire. Mussels from the waters around San Francisco. And hot broiled Virginia bacon.

He compiled a list, an extensive fantasy of a meal, which he imagined sitting down to enjoy right off the steamship when he got home. That list is now a snapshot of some of the most cherished regional American foods of his time.

But for a vast array of political, cultural and ecological reasons, few of Twain’s picks — terrapin, prairie chicken and raccoon among them — would be considered an integral part of our national identity today. This month, the audiobook company Audible released an eight-episode series, hosted by the actor Nick Offerman, that explores the reasons.

Offerman, who compared the taste of turtle meat to that of chicken, was eager to get his hands on some of the more esoteric foods on Twain’s list. In May, as part of the show, he organized a dinner at the Mark Twain House & Museum, the author’s carefully restored home in Hartford, Connecticut, where Twain lived with his wife, Olivia Clemens, after they were married in 1870.

Offerman asked Tyler Anderson, a Connecticut chef who competed on “Top Chef,” to put together a menu inspired by Twain’s list.

奧佛曼要求康州廚師泰勒．安德森以吐溫清單為靈感設計菜單。安德森曾參加美國競技節目「頂級大廚」。

Anderson produced an eight-course meal. It started with raw oysters with a frothy sherry-maple cream, and moved on to smoked raccoon sausage wrapped in caul fat. The fifth course was sheepshead, a tough, bony fish he poached in olive oil and served with potato purée.

The audio series, loosely based on Beahrs’ 2010 book “Twain’s Feast,” includes plenty of snippets from that dinner, along with excerpts from Twain’s fiction and memoir, weaving in new interviews and reporting that examine changes all over the country through the prolific author’s palate.

Each episode of the series focuses on a different ingredient that Twain loved. Raccoons, like sheepshead, are still plentiful, but the recipes for its meat that were published in the original edition of “Joy of Cooking” have since been edited out. Tastes change.

“The foods Twain loved, we took for granted as American classics,” Beahrs said. “But these things that are part of the richness of everyday life — they can vanish very, very quickly.”

比爾斯說：「吐溫喜歡的食物，我們理所當然以為是美國的經典，不過這些屬於豐富日常生活一部分的事物，也能消失得非常非常快。」

Justin Trudeau’s Official Home: Unfit for a Leader or Anyone Else 加拿大總理官邸 不宜人居

文/Ian Austen

譯/李京倫

At Canada’s official residence for its prime minister, security cameras keep silent watch over the fences, visitors pass through gates that can block truck bombs and a detail of uniformed Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers patrol day and night.

在加拿大總理官邸，監視器靜靜盯著圍籬，遊客從能阻擋卡車炸彈的大門前經過，一隊穿制服的加拿大皇家騎警日夜巡邏。

But the prime minister himself is unlikely to be found inside.

但總理本人不太可能在裡面。

When Justin Trudeau became prime minister three years ago, he took a pass on moving his family into the official residence at 24 Sussex Drive, built in 1868 by an American-born lumber baron. Decades of neglect had turned Canada’s top political address into its most famous home renovation project.

But no recent prime ministers have been willing to commit the tens of millions of dollars it would take to make the stone house habitable again. It would look as if they were spending money on themselves, a politically toxic step in Canada.

Trudeau, 46, who lived at 24 Sussex as a child when his father was prime minister, is no exception.

現46歲的杜魯多也不例外。他幼年父親當總理時住過薩塞克斯街24號。

“No prime minister wants to spend a penny of taxpayer dollars on upkeeping that house,” Trudeau told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. earlier this year.

杜魯多今年稍早對加拿大廣播公司說：「沒有一位總理會為了修理那棟房子，花掉納稅人任何一分錢。」

There was little criticism of Trudeau’s decision to live with his wife and their three children in Rideau Cottage, a relatively modest, two-story red brick house behind Rideau Hall, the house of Canada’s governor general who fulfills Queen Elizabeth II’s duties as head of state.

That is because the official residence’s deteriorating condition is no secret to Canadians, with government reports documenting its decline for more than a decade.

這是因為總理官邸破敗對加拿大人並不是秘密，十幾年來政府報告詳細記錄了官邸的衰敗。

Those reports make grim reading for anyone but a contractor hoping to land the renovation job.

報告內容對任何人來說都不是好消息，除了想接整修工程的包商以外。

“The building systems at 24 Sussex have reached the point of imminent or actual failure,” one report, by the National Capital Commission, the federal agency that manages official residences, found this year. It rated the residence’s condition as “critical.”

負責管理官邸的聯邦機構「國家首府委員會」今年在報告中指出：「薩塞克斯街24號的建築體系即將或已經崩壞。」報告將官邸的情形評定為「危險級」。

Its wiring, according to the report, has become a fire hazard; the boiler is obsolete; the exterior stonework is crumbling; and the plumbing blocks up regularly.

報告顯示，官邸的線路系統有走火之虞，供應暖氣和熱水的鍋爐老舊過時，外牆石造部分正在崩解剝落，而且水管經常阻塞。

The building by a pool added by Trudeau’s father is “rotting,” the report said, and air-conditioning comes from inefficient window units that could make it easy for intruders to slip in. Many of those windows need replacement anyway. Everywhere there is asbestos.

On top of all that, the house is ill-suited for official functions. Among the house’s many deficiencies, “the dining room is at the same time too large for a family and too small for state dinners,” the report said.

更重要的是，這間房子不適合官式活動。報告說，這房子有諸多缺點，包括「餐廳對一個家庭來說太大，辦國宴卻太小」。

The current cost estimate to deal with everything (excluding security upgrades): 38 million Canadian dollars ($28.7 million).